Missio Aachen German Theological Researcher Miriam Leidinger is currently in Kenya to find out how Africa especially the Kenyan Church has been able to grow strong in faith from the Small Christian Communities (SCC’s).
Speaking during an interview with Waumini Communications, at the Kenya Conference of Catholic Bishops (KCCB) – General Secretariat in Nairobi, Leidinger said that she is meeting Pastoral Coordinator of AMECEA and KCCB to plan and forge a way forward on how to strengthen Small Christian Communities in Germany to save the faith that has deteriorated, forcing parishes to merge due to minimal numbers of the faithful.
“Worldwide, the Church is facing problems on how to live the faith and Germany in particular has a problem of bigger parishes being merged due to the diminishing number of the faithful. So the question is how we can form active Small Christian Communities. In Africa and especially in Kenya, there’s a way where faith is lived from the bottom up in small groups and that is why I am here to see how that reality is lived,” she said.
Missio Aachen Theological Researcher Miriam Leidinger,
and AMECEA Pastoral Coordinator Rev. Fr. Emanuel Chimombo
Leidinger said that Missio Aachen Theological Research Department and the people in Germany in the last ten years or so, have shown interest in Small Christian Communities because it is a good way of combining living faith and living the Church making it not only a place of spirituality and evangelization but also a social forum to meet small groups.
On his part, the AMECEA Pastoral Coordinator Fr. Emmanuel Chimombo said that the issue of Small Christian Communities is a pastoral priority for the AMECEA region adding that SCC’s have been well established in Africa with their Pastoral Departments well-coordinated in terms of activities aimed at strengthening the groups in the dioceses.
“In the past years we have tried to strengthen it because it came up as one of the strategic plans that has been running from 2004 to 2014. The first item on the agenda in the strategic plan is to strengthen Small Christian Communities throughout the region and this is always discussed during AMECEA plenary that take place every four years,” he added.
Fr. Chimombo was grateful that MISSIO considered AMECEA region as a place to learn about SCC’s. “It is quite interesting to learn that MISSIO and other countries like America are very much interested in seeing how the church has been thriving and becoming stronger within the region even with the challenge of minimal number of priests to serve the swelling number of the faithful in various dioceses and countries,” he said.
Meanwhile the KCCB Deputy General Secretary Rev. Fr. Lucas Ong’esa Manwa expressed gratitude to MISSIO for choosing Kenya as a piloting country in Networking of Small Christian Communities. He said that bringing together SCC’s was very essential in AMECEA countries and the entire world especially now that MISSIO is in Kenya to learn on how to grow strongly in faith.
“They want to understand how we network our Small Christian Communities from different diocese within the KCCB, the existing structures and how they operate and to identify areas of supporting evangelization as it holds the families together and also find out how faith can be strengthened effectively and to identify challenges in related areas of pastoral work,” he said.
By Rose Achiego, Waumini Communications, KCCB